View full sizeJohn A. Lacko | Special to the Kalamazoo GazetteOngoing debate: Tonya Schuitmaker (right) and Robert Jones (left) are vying for state Senate seats.

KALAMAZOO — If elected to Senate, state Democratic Rep. Robert Jones said he would introduce a bill that cuts legislators’ pay by 25 percent as part of his reform platform.

“Politicians in Lansing have been sheltered in the Capitol for too long and have forgotten about the pain the people are feeling at home,” Jones, who is running for the Senate’s 20th District, said at a press conference Thursday. “There is no reason that politicians should be exempt from difficult cuts.”

Jones announced an initiative Thursday that he is calling the ACT Plan — Accountability, Cuts and Transparency — and highlighted several bills in that vein that he has supported.Jones previously voted for legislation that cuts lawmakers’ pay by 10 percent and goes into effect in January.

Eliminating lifetime health care for legislators, banning lawmakers from becoming lobbyists until two years after their tenure ends, and requiring government spending and budgets to be posted on a website are among other reform bills he has supported.

“We must go line-by-line through each state contract to ensure that every taxpayer dollar is spent wisely,” he said at the press conference.

Jones is running against Republican state Rep. Tonya Schuitmaker in the Nov. 2 election.Schuitmaker told the Kalamazoo Gazette that she was also in favor many of the measures Jones highlighted.

“They are great reforms and they should have been done years ago but in terms of actual savings, show me how much that’s going to save the taxpayers,” she said.

“Where is he at on the big-ticket items that are going to be actual savings,” Schuitmaker said pointing to Jones’ “no” votes requiring state employees to pay 3 percent of their wages toward the retiree health care plan for three years.

Jones said ACT initiative isn’t just about overall cost-savings but to demonstrate that members of the Legislature recognize they should “share the same pain in cutbacks that the average Michigan citizen is dealing with.”